13 Days and Counting

Holy Cow, I go back on August 11th and my students start on August 17th.  It is time to get serious  about what I am going to do this coming school year.  I have an insane amount of twitter links uploaded to multiple evernote notebooks that I need to re-visit.  My concentration has been on homework and grading.  I have some great resources!  My type A side of my personality is obsessing on planning.  I love that part of myself, but right now I want to embrace my creative, flighty, global thinking, child part of myself who is loudly protesting the task master.  She is screaming  to remind me that as much as I try to plan and organize, and make never ending lists what I really need to do is stop and trust my gut!!  And more importantly, think about the kids who will be walking through the door in a matter of days.


So now I am looking at the notes I took while watching Chris Lehmann's ISTE Keynote and thinking of what has been the basis of my teaching career for the past 21 years: my students.  It has always been and will always be about the relationship I build/have with my students.  Here are some key ideas taken from his keynote that will guide me in the next days as I plan for a new school year:

• Thoughtful, Passionate, Kind
• "The ethic of care" I care about my students and I care for my students - a family
• Inquiry, Research, Collaboration, Presentation, Reflection
• Okay to fail as long as I am learning
• Never doubt the Wisdom of the Voices of children
• Teach them to ask powerful questions
• Head, Heart, Hands, Voice
• Technology should be like oxygen: ubiquitous, necessary, and invisible

I am a mathematics teacher.  So it is easy to get caught up in the high stakes testing and endless standards.  But this year will begin differently, it will begin by acknowledging passion.  I have read the The Passion Driven Classroom by Angela Maiers and Amy Sandvold this summer.  So to begin my school year I plan on incorporating passion in the following ways:

• Passion Paper Blogs from McTeach - Karen McMillan I will use this to teach blogging and to create a Passion Wall so that students will know what their classmates are passionate about.
• Using google docs to provide a collaborative opportunity by having students write a collaborative passion essay (Collaborative Wiki Project from Bill Ferriter)
• Connecting math to real-life and then using the students passions to connect our pre-algebra standards and Algebra 1 standards to the passions of our classroom (Real Life Problem Solving)

I'm thinking that this is not the beginning my department chairman is expecting.  However, as I sit here listening to Phil Collins sing "You'll Be In My Heart" I think of the incredible students who have touched my heart for the past 21 years.  It is about the students first, then the mathematics I am supposed to teach.  

Now I have the perspective I need to start my new school year!